School News

NW Environmental forum on stopping forest loss

Forest conversion to housing in the Puget Sound region.

SFR's Northwest Environmental Forum convened a two-day session on October 18-19, 2010 at UW Botanic Gardens Center for Urban Horticulture. The forum, "Changing the Game: We Need Transformative Strategies to Stop Forest Losses," was attended by 67 participants and heard from a diverse group of speakers who focused on market-based conservation strategies. Speakers from SFR included Brian Boyle, Forum director, Professor Bruce Bare, and Research Scientist Luke Rogers. Other speakers came from a diverse array of stakeholder interests including tribal forestry, NGOs, land trusts, the timber industry, ecosystem markets consultants, and state agencies. The forum agenda and speaker presentations can be viewed at http://www.nwenvironmentalforum.org/.

recent faculty books

Waveland Press, Inc. has published the second edition of Forest Health and Protection by Robert L. Edmonds, James K. Agee and Robert I. Gara. Widely recognized as the best treatment of the technical issues concerning forest health and forest protection available, the original edition of this text was the first to treat fire, wind, insects, and diseases, and their interactions, holistically.
Sarah Reichard's new book,The Conscientious Gardener: Cultivating a Garden Ethic, will be published by the University of California Press and available in January 2011. The book explores the many benefits of sustainable gardening and gives practical advice on topics such as pest control, water conservation, living with native animals, mulching, and invasive species.
Sustainability Unpacked: Food, Energy, and Water for Resilient Environments and Societies," co-authored by SFR faculty Kristiina Vogt and Dan Vogt, SFR graduate student Asep Suntana, SFR affiliate faculty Toral Patel-Weynand, along with

other authors Maura Shelton, John Gordon, Cal Mukumoto, and Patricia Roads, was published inctober 2010 by Earthscan Publishers. The book discusses the interlinking and complex elements of sustainability and how they influence and are influenced by our society when it comes to making decisions about resource use.

Regional Food Security conference

"Cultivating Community Food Security: Recent Research in Urban/Rural Food Systems," a conference at the UW Botanic Gardens Center for Urban Horticulture on December 4-5, 2010, was designed to increase collaboration among community leaders and residents to create a more sustainable regional food system in terms of production, land use, and equitable access to food. Co-hosted by UW Botanic Gardens and Washington State University Extension, and sponsored by the King Conservation District, the conference brought together a diverse audience of over 150 attendees, including urban gardeners, agriculture organizations, and policy-enacting legislators. Speakers presented emerging research on topics ranging from urban soils, food markets, urban/rural economic interdependence, and public health and work groups convened to develop post-conference initiatives.

Highlights

In faculty news, five-year reappointments to the UW graduate faculty included Sally Brown, Charles Halpern, and Ken Raedeke; Clare Ryan was reappointed Adjunct Professor in the Evans School of Public Affairs for the 2010-2011 academic year; and Sharon Doty was appointed to the Molecular and Cellular Biology graduate program, a UW interdisciplinary research program. SFR recently welcomed Affiliate Professor James Flewelling, who will be working with the Precision Forestry Cooperative on biometrics; and Visiting Professor Andrew Hansen from Montana State University.

Jason Scullion, ’10, a graduate of the joint SFR/Evans School’s concurrent Master of Science /Master of Public Affairs program and now in SFR’s PhD program, received the UW Graduate School's 2010 Distinguished Thesis Award for his thesis "The Political Ecology of Payments of Ecosystem Services: A Case Study of Coatepec, Mexico." Watch a video of his research presentation at the 2010 SFR Graduate Student

Symposium. The thesis has been forwarded to the Western Association of Graduate Schools Distinguished Thesis Award Competition.

Research Associate Professor Ernesto Alvarado and graduate students Laurel James and Jorge Ramos, ‘10, SFR participants in the UW chapter of SACNAS (Society for Advancement of Hispanics/ Chicanos and Native Americans in Science), contributed to that chapter receiving a 2010 Role Model Chapter Award for Outreach Excellence.

SFR was among co-sponsors of the College of the Environment's Fall 2010 lecture series on "Food and the Environment." The series was widely attended and featured a wide range of national and international speakers.

Forest Resources was among 15 UW graduate programs highly rated among their peers at major universities across the country in an assessment by the National Research Council. The Council evaluated 5,000 doctoral programs from 212 universities nationwide and released the results on September 28, 2010.

The Arboretum Foundation, Seattle Parks and Recreation, and UW Botanic Gardens sponsored the official opening of the new Gateway to Chile display garden in Washington Park Arboretum on Sunday, October 17, 2010.

During a UW visit by Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams, SFR hosted an afternoon visit at Anderson Hall on November 19, 2010, for WIlliams and faculty, staff, and students who have been Peace Corps volunteers. The UW currently has more alumni (101) serving in the Peace Corps than any other university. SFR has been offering the Peace Corps Masters International (PCMI) program since 2005, under the direction of Professor Ivan Eastin, and has recently expanded the program to include a new option in Natural Resource Management. The original PCMI option is in International Forestry; the new option gives students an opportunity to study in any of SFR’s graduate research interest groups.